I recall as a child thinking it was a tad unfair that God struck down someone who was carrying his Ark with a bolt of lightning (2 Samuel 6:1-7and 1 Chronicles 13:9-12). Surely his tripping and falling was an accident not punishable by death?My reply:

[See the reply to the similar discussion about the Ark, lower down.]

Something else that bares noting, is that if you believe God has written our lives and fates beforehand (it’s also called Predestination), did Judas Iscariot have any choice in his betrayal of Jesus? Wasn’t he predestined to be damned? Because some man had to be Jesus’ betrayer, and one feels it is a bit much allocating this damnable act to any person.My reply:

Nowhere in the Bible is predestination recognized. There is a world of difference between predestination and freedom of choice. The fact that God knows the end from the beginning gives us no basis to believe that He interferes in any way in the choices we make. The whole ethos of God’s dealing with us is to have independent thinking humans who, of their own accord, make the wisest choices they can.

Here’s a list of bible verses that make one wonder just what sort of God Christians give their lives to in sincere patronage to what they call ‘Holy’. If any readers have better examples (and I’m certain there must be) please be sure to add to the list. I know Christians will excuse the worst by saying ‘Oh those are Old Testament” so I’ll endeavour to try to quote liberally from the New.

My reply:

We need to understand that the Bible is thought-inspired and not word-inspired; Old Testament and New. That means that though packed with inspiration and wisdom, the interpretation of the people who wrote it is often somewhat primitive. This means that although the scriptures never lie, the phenomena and inspiration the authors experienced were often interpreted as magical and mystical. Today we know better to some extent and we interpret things a little differently, but without distorting the basic truths.

1. God himself will kill tens of thousands if it pleases him: 1st Samuel 6:19 in the King James Version: “And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men (50,070)”. Kill 50 000 men for looking at something?

My reply:

These people who died after handling the ark in a way that they were strongly warned not to, were seen at the time to have been ‘smitten by God’.

Today we understand things a little differently. It is obvious that the ark was a transmitter, or more likely, a receiver of tremendous electrical voltage and wattage – able to communicate an unknown distance from outer space.

Had the Chernobyl accident happened through mismanagement in ancient times, God would have been blamed for the ‘smiting’ of:

534,000 from the explosion

3.5 million from radiation over the course of 15 years

by January 2000, roughly 7.6 million deaths reported due to radiation poisoning caused by the disaster

2. You can kill a woman if she seizes a man’s private parts without his permission: Deuteronomy 25:11-1: If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. My reply:The Law of God is the Ten Comandments in Exodus 20, and is eternal and unchanging. It was written by God.

In contrast, the legislations of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are the Biblical books that dealt with the administration of justice and the law of the people. It is also referred to as ‘The Law of Moses’. It was written by Moses. It was very specific to the governance of the early Israelites.

Although Jesus respected the law of the Jews – previously of the Israelites – He pointed out that ‘an eye for an eye’ was for that era, while the new era that He ushered in preferred to ‘turn the other cheek’.

3. Perversity and human trafficking condoned: “Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse.” (1 Peter 2:18) My reply:

The early Christians were not there to overthrow, rebel against or undermine any of the systems of the time. Their purpose was to teach people how to live humble, yet strong, dignified and powerful lives that had huge impact on both good and evil people they came into contact with. This is, in fact, is exactly what DID happen many, many times; hence the phenomenal spread of Christianity.

4. Sex slavery condoned: “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.”Exodus 21: 7-8

My reply:

This, too, is part of the Levitical law that governed the somewhat wild and primitive people of that time – very different to the love between husband and wife that Jesus spoke about that He compared to the love between Christ and His church…..very little could be more loving and respectful.

5. Divorce akin to debauchery: “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.” (Luke 16:18)

My reply:

How can I make any comment upon the effect of divorce on modern society and the downfall of the family structures? We all know it – the statistics are there for everyone to see.

If we people took marriage as seriously as we should, we would be very, very sure before we commit ourselves, and spend far more time preparing ourselves for the marriage and less for the wedding.

There IS an outlet of divorce for impossible marriages, for instance when abuse is involved, but the partners, once they have separated are no longer available for further marriages, unless the other partner broke up the marriage through adultery.

6. Cannibalism: “And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son….” (II Kings 6:28-29) My reply:The Bible is not all prophesy and wisdom and instruction on how to live. It is also a history. History and the Bible abound with good and evil deeds and good and evil people. This was just one particularly unpleasant incident during a siege.

7. If your genitals have been damaged, stay out of church: “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.”(Deuteronomy 23:1)

My reply:

The ancient system controlled disease by means of strict quarantine laws. Their ignorance of medicine did not allow them to differentiate between what was contagious or infectious and what wasn’t. Their answer was just to keep anyone who had something wrong with them away from crowded gatherings.

8. Incest and getting drunk with dad is no problem if the world is running thin on suitable DNA donors: And the elder said to the younger Our father is old, and there is no man left on the earth, to come in unto us after the manner of the whole earth. Come, let us make him drunk with wine, and let us lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the elder went in and lay with her father: but he perceived not neither when his daughter lay down, nor when she rose up. And the next day the elder said to the younger: Behold I lay last night with my father, let us make him drink wine also to night, and thou shalt lie with him, that we may save seed of our father. They made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in, and lay with him: and neither then did he perceive when she lay down, nor when she rose up. So the two daughters of Lot were with child by their father. [Genesis 19:31-36]

My reply:

As I said, the Bible is a history as well as inspiration. We all know what trouble Lot and his family got into! Indeed they should be a lesson to us all on how NOT to do things!

9. Looking at a woman with desire is akin to adultery: “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28)

My reply:

In this passage, Jesus doesn’t talk about fleeting admiration for a beautiful woman. He specifically mentions lust.

No psychopath ever became who he was without first indulging in pornographic longings, or lust – and that is an established fact.

It is a sad truth that what we think about enough, we do; what we do enough, becomes a habit; what habits we indulge in enough, become our intrinsic character.10. But incestuous rape is cool: And when she had presented him the meat, he took hold of her, and said: Come lie with me, my sister. She answered him: Do not so, my brother, do not force me: for no such thing must be done in Israel. Do not thou this folly. [II Kings 13:8-12] But he would not hearken to her prayers, but being stronger overpowered her and lay with her. [II Kings 13:14]

My reply:

Once again, an historical incident that was in no way promoted as something any of us should emulate!

11. Pray in private, and if you do so in church, do so quietly: Matt 6:5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.”

My reply:

What is the purpose of Prayer? See this article …….. and then you decide which type of prayer Jesus recommended, and why.12. If you offend God he will kill you: “And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.” (Genesis 38:7-10)

My reply:

In Biblical times, both Old and New Testament, if anything unpleasant happened to anyone, they were deemed to have been punished by God, especially if they were believed to have disobeyed the Mosaic law.

Jesus tried to correct this thinking when He healed the blind man in John 9:1-7. He explained that neither the man nor his parents had caused the blindness through any sin of theirs that brought on punishment by God.

13. God smites women, children and often animals with equal gusto, he seems to equal evil and wrong doing by association, rather than by being guilty of the personal, individual act: ”Behold with a great plague will the LORD smite thy people and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods: And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day.” (II Chronicles 21:14-15)

My reply:

The wicked king Jehoram came to the throne and immediately started on a path cataclysmic to himself, his family and his people.

God sent His prophet Elijah with a stern warning as to what the end effect of Jehoram’s path would be unless he changed. Of course, he didn’t change, and the inevitable effect followed the cause, as it does throughout nature, creation and science.

14. Rev 21: 8 ”liars–their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” Eternal damnation for lying? In South Africa murderers and rapists often get released for good behaviur, lying is politics.

My reply:

Probably true! But lying is more than just telling untruths. It is also denying or ignoring truth when it stares you in the face; being incongruent within yourself; being without integrity – reflected in what you say and what you do; and an inner paradigm that sets you on an insecure and shaky path of bad choices. Once again, cause and effect in action.

And speaking of lying, the bible ends with one. It calls its message ‘the good news’ and concludes, “I am coming soon.” Wrong on the ‘soon’ bit, and unless we’ve missed something, no one has come. But I get it, if 2000 years pass, soon after such a length of time must be VERY soon. If 10 000 years pass, soon must be very VERY soon.

My reply:

‘Soon’ means ‘sudden’ or ‘unexpected’ rather than ‘in the near future’.

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